Cold Day in Smithville, Texas

Cuddling with my Caya dog while Wawa sleeps on the futon inside the container house.   Wonderfully cold and loving it!

Working on the plumbing.  The hot water pipe runs along the top of the metal container roof and is painted black to absorb heat throughout the day.  Surprisingly, with just an average diameter of PVC piping running the length of 40 plus feet, there is enough hot water to have at least a 5 minute shower!  During the summer it only takes a few minutes for the sun to heat it right back up.  Think: water hose sitting out in the yard on a hot sunny day.

We had ducks in the pond today!

Our sweet baby boy!

We saw Bigfoot!
Only joking! That's just Brad , my 13 year old!!

Chilly Tuesday at the Container House

 

Lovin this amazing fall weather!

 

Deck on Container Home in Smithville Texas

After the container was leveled, we began building the large deck that spans the middle section of the container.  It is approximately 12 by 24 foot deck with a tin roof supported by cedar logs we took from dead trees on our property.  These cedar logs are about 8-9 inches in diameter, and they look so nice! 

 

 

We also added the fence around the deck along with locking gate to protect our toddler.  Here, he is petting his little bear sculpture we got him at the Bastrop Lowe's!  He loves to run around on the deck "helping" us prepare dinner.

 

 

Time To Go

5 minutes on the big deck with a glass of Sterling.

 

The Mad Scientist

Back in the dog days of a Houston summer Dale was truly mad to be working on the inside of our container home.  It was so worth it because our weekend getaway is so peaceful and fun.  We are still working 99% of the time but that 1% of peace and relaxation sure is fun!

Bellawood Container House Floor

We're finally getting some style to our container house with this gorgeous Bellawood flooring we scored off CL.  I bought 1200 plus square feet of mixed colors for $300.  My favorite is the Koa wood.  It's the pieces with the dark stripes effect on contrasting golden wood.  This is as far as we got because we only brought out 3 boxes of the wood.  It is so easy to install, that it only took a fraction of the time we had anticipated. At 30 inches installed, it's a little over one third of the width of the single container cabin.  The overall width is approximately 88 inches after we installed the wood frame, insulation material and plywood walls.  More pictures:

 

The other big changes since last post is that Walter is walking!  Pictures here with Wawa is the new cupboard I found (yes, on CL).

American Pickers

I am beginning to understand how people who live in BFE start accumulating a wealth of junk!  You hang on to things because you might need them, and the cost of fuel to get more stuff is expensive.  In addition, it's just plain hard to dispose of stuff with no trash service.  Furthermore, we still have no truck with which to haul s#!+ if to another locale.

It's nice to know that our roof can hold hundreds of thousands of pounds!

Riding Mower Up & Running

We mowed a path all the way around the pond along with many more accomplishments:
Turned on well, separate blogpost to follow.
Placed 250 gallon tote on roof of container over the bathroom.
Cleared brush around the homestead.
Almost sank the mower in the pond.
Fixed the leaks in the doors and windows.
It rained hard!
And more.....

Security System

While purusing our nearest walmart i threw this deeply discounted package of solar lights in the buggy to be used as our first line of defense against would-be thieves. I did not get around to unpacking them until about 6 pm.  Until then they had been lying on the hot desertesque earth since our 9 am arrival to the ranch.   And, yes, since it is obvious that I won't be harvesting any crops here anytime in the near future I am now referring to our small slice of paradise as "the ranch" and not "the farm".

Back to the security system shall we?  As one can see by this picture, the compacted heat inside the unpacked box of 8 solar lights caused some meltage on the lovely clear plastic housings.  I was still able to snap them together but just barely.  As long as they produce lights along a drive i figured they would serve their intended purpose.  If Chelsea would have been there last weekend she would have laughed her as off!  Then again, if she was there these badboys would have been unpacked and assembled in the car on the way to the ranch.  Thus, eliminating the entire situation in the first place.

I thought about returning them but they all produce light and I think they are funky fresh.  Now they look like hi-dollar handblown glass instead of plastic so cheap it melts in the midday heat.  To be fair, I think the solar panels were collecting energy from the sun's heat through the cardboard box and these were all crammed together-like.

They make me smile.  I'm keeping them!

Container on the Ground

It was a tight squeeze getting the container through the gate. Dale had to cut the wooden structure surrounding the gate along with removing the gate itself. He even had to cut down a few small trees so the truck, trailer, with container could turn into the property. Watch the video below:

Long Day

Dale and Brad have been working so hard on the container house.  It's already delivered to the farm and we had a steak dinner on the Henry pit last night.  The lighting looks cool at night.

We Closed on the Land!

We are now the proud new owners of 10 gorgeous acres deep in the heart of Texas!  We put $15,000 down today, and we will pay $439 per month for 15 years.  We hope to pay it off earlier since this is now our nestegg-retirement and dream home estate... all that jazz.  I decided I wanted to be putting money into land and NOT stocks from this point on.  I have always lost on the stock exchanges and I am sick of losing my money.  I think land is the way to go, and I could not be happier with our decision to invest in this property.

Windows and Doors All In Container House

One thing we forgot to plan out when I found these awesome TEMPERED glass architectural windows on CL was the dimensions in relation to the corrugated steel siding of the container itself.  The windows are 45 inches wide by 72 inches tall.  I knew I would have some extra space at the bottom as compared with the door, but what I didn't even give any thought to was the fact that the width of 45" didn't jive with the shape of the corrugated container, therefore there is a slight difference in the distance from the door on each window.  See, we had to attach the windows to the outer shape of each peak/valley.  Here is how I plan to camoflauge this:

Awesome

Instagram makes the container look rad.

We Have A Hole!

Today is the day we just cut the hole for the front door and windows.  Wow, Dale and Carlos are hard at work while Walter and I are fiddling with instagram!

Broken Window

Yesterday, Dale dropped the nailgun on one of the windows.  Interestingly, it did not shatter into millions of tiny pieces as one might expect from tempered glass.  Instead, it broke like the window that killed the stalker dude in the movie "Ghost".  They aren't tempered afterall, so it was a blessing in disguise.  The nice person who sold them to us told us they were "safety glass" when I asked if they were tempered.  The only way to see was to naturally break one!

So we went with another nice pair of windows off the old CL.  This time I can see the sticker that says they are tempered.  The windows we have now are 72" x 45", and should give us even more light into the space.  They are dark bronze aluminum frame with low E double pane tempered glass.  Dale is over at the shop framing them in right now.

All together we have now spent $410 on windows.  Not exactly the plan.  Damn!  I will prolly sell the mate to the first set myself on cl.  If I can get $100 I'll feel better about the whole fiasco!

The casualty window is the one lying on its side to the left in the close up.  It is now in the dumpster.

Hot Mess

Who knew this would turn into such a hot mess?

Big Picture Windows for Container Home

Large Picture Windows for Container Home

I feel like I struck gold this morning on CL!  Dale was about to either a) frame in the sliding door only and wait for windows or b) go purchase a second sliding glass door and take it apart to make the large windows I want.

Well, duh...Craigslist to the rescue!  I found many opportunities in the great City of Houston by some super nice folks I might add!  A gentleman named Scott hooked us up with these bad boys!  They are new Pella low E double pane with argon gas, pvc frame ready to be installed on either side of the same type of Pella sliding glass door.  I'm so happy :o)

The door is 80" tall while these windows are 76", but I decided we would install them flush on the top and 4 inches from the floor.  This leaves just enough room for the awesome white cedar planks Dale scored on Tuesday.  We will do the floor and the trim in this white cedar.  He bought a truckload for $100.  The windows were $125 each.

Rainy Saturday Building Container Home

The rain has brought relief from the heat while we complete the insulation and prepare the container for the AC system.